A Hard No

With our CSA shares sold out for 2019, I am impatient to get planting.  I have maxed out the capacity of the plant stand under the grow lights in our living room and I would love to be able to begin preparing our covered gardens for transplants.

I have read that other gardeners in Ottawa are shovelling off their gardens to get a jump on the spring melt.  Given that now I can at least see one of our box gardens, I decided this might be worth a try. 

You can see the outline of the garden on the right. 
The garden on the left is still completely hidden by snow and ice.

The long and short of it is that no, this will in no way work.  The plastic may not be covered with snow but there is a gigantic iceberg sitting in a pool of water on top of the row cover.

I could pry the iceberg up with my shovel but could absolutely not remove it from the garden.

After giving up on the box gardens, I tried one of the pallet gardens.

After some shovelling, it looked hopeful...

But alas, the edges of the plastic row cover are firmly stuck to the ground encased in ice chunks.  It seems that gardening is not to be, at least this week.  Who knows, maybe next week will be a winner. 

In the meantime, I will stick to planting seeds indoors and rejoicing as they sprout.